A broadband communications system, for example, can be used to deliver high-definition digital entertainment and telecommunications such as video, voice, and high-speed Internet to subscriber premises. For example, a cable-based system can be used to deliver these services over an existing cable television network, which can take the form of an all-coax, all-fiber, or hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) network. In other broadband communications systems, these services can be delivered over a telephone network, which can include twisted pair (wire) communications medium, using various Digital Subscriber Line (xDSL) technologies. Customer premise equipment (CPE) devices located at subscriber premises receive these services and deliver them to the end users. The CPE devices can include, for example, cable modems (CMs) or embedded multimedia terminal adapters (eMTAs), settop boxes, and/or gateway devices, among others.
At a subscriber premise, for example, high speed Internet and voice services, can be received by an eMTA, and then delivered over an Ethernet network to a personal computer and IP telephone, respectively, for example. Video can be separately received by a settop box and delivered to a television connected to the settop box. To receive video on additional televisions at the subscriber premise, an additional settop box may be needed for each additional television to receive the video from the broadband communications system network and deliver it to the additional television connected to the settop box.
Gateway devices that merge these various receivers into a single device are emerging. Generally, gateway devices can receive video, voice, and high-speed Internet, for example, at a subscriber premise and deliver these services to their respective client devices using various pre-configured networking technologies including wired technologies (such as Ethernet and The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA®)) and wireless technologies (such as Wi-Fi™). For example, a gateway device can be pre-configured to receive high speed data and deliver it via Wi-Fi™ or Ethernet to a personal computer. The gateway device also can be pre-configured to receive video and deliver it to one or more televisions via Wi-Fi™ or a MoCA®, for example.
Home electronic devices can have more than one networking interface (e.g., USB, Ethernet, or wireless) to enable an end user to connect to various networks based on the end user's home network. However, existing gateway devices do not attempt to track the networking capabilities of the client devices connected to the gateway devices and manage the traffic delivered between the gateway device and the client devices over the various networking technologies for optimum network usage.